Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to cash the Reality check....before it bounces.

some explanation
Daniel — (archived)

>you then jumped from the graphic arts to explaining the creation of music by saying "in the same way, Beethoven creates symphonies, not somebody sitting on a stage and banging the same key on a piano for an hour." I am sure this is rife with some meaning that escapes me.

..could refer to John Cage - the 'piece' from the 1950s called "4 minutes 33 seconds" during which the peformer sits at the piano and does exactly nothing for that period of time. The concept *was* honest in my opinion - getting the audience to pay attention to the 'sounds of silence' - but it is hardly art. OTOH,
the sketchbooks of Beethoven have been described as 'looking like battlefields' - that is how hard he worked, ie. to refine a mundane or lifeless basic idea, into something of hte highest possible quality.

John Cage was I think an honest man, but only an experimentalist. Arnold Schoenberg once said that he 'was not a composer at all, but rather an inventor - of genius' (a kiss of death, as someone once commented to me). And btw Schoenberg was one of the most radical composers of the early 20th century - many people even today find his stuff difficult to listent to/understand .. but at least he was a composer & artist, who worked incredibly hard. Now, as Tom points out, contemporary art seems locked into this obsession with 'pushing the boundaries', which by now is totally common and automatic - and apparently mandatory, which is where the prescriptions of the 'cultural elites' come in. It really does often seem like Bart Simpson pulling his pants down in class - or maybe rather the "Homer the Artist" episode (banging junk together - a classic!)

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